Richard Stallman's personal site.

The Coup Against President Chavez

Americans recently (as of April 2002) heard that President Chavez of Venezuela had been
ousted in a military coup
after protests organized by "business and labor" in which some protesters were killed.
Newspaper coverage in the US hinted that Chavez was mentally unstable. It sounds pretty
clear cut: if both "business" and "labor" were against him, his
policies must have been foolish, right?

I'm skeptical of that picture, because on March 4,
Greg
Palast reported that Chavez had done something very sensible: he
had raised taxes on oil being exported from Venezuela (from 16% to
32%, I have read elsewhere) to pay for social programs. In other
words, he insisted that the rich countries that buy the oil must let
Venezuela, a poor country, have a substantial share of the value of
that oil.

When Mossadegh in Iran did something similar in the 1950s, the CIA
arranged a coup, putting the Shah in absolute power. (His tyrannical
rule stimulated the public hostility that brought Khomeini to power
and took Americans hostage; don't you wish the CIA had left Mossadegh
alone?)

According to Palast, the IMF was already openly fomenting the
overthrow of Chavez before March, and appealing to right-wing groups
in business, unions, and the Church. I'd expect that the CIA and the
US embassy were helping, since that's normal for them. Palast
predicted, "watch this space: the President of Venezuela will be out
of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow
him to raise taxes on the oil companies." I now predict that the new
government will soon reduce the oil taxes and cancel the social
programs.

Was Chavez mentally unstable? Perhaps. He thought he could make his
country independent of the IMF. He thought that the generals of his
Venezuela would be loyal to Venezuela instead of Washington. A man
would have to be crazy to believe such things--or would he?

Maybe not. Yesterday Chavez's mass supporters, joined with
international pressure (not from the US of course), reversed the coup
and brought him back to power.